A/N: My apologies in the delayed chapter, things got busier than I expected and while I was still writing, it was only at the pace that my schedule would allow.

I don't own anything but Sarah, Jack and Tom.


The sound you're hearing

Is the symphony of what we are

Revelation will not come

With heart and mind closed and divided


It takes several hours for Alistair to explain to me the basest of information about Thedas. I stop him at each unfamiliar word or phrase and ask him to elaborate, which frustrates him at first but he gradually just accepts that my questions will come and he answers them accordingly. My confusion, questions and need for him to explain some things more than once is no doubt contributing to how long this is taking. By six o'clock, I've learned that Ferelden is one country in Thedas, and that there are others and they vaguely parallel the countries here. By seven thirty, I have a basic understanding of how magic works and the laws that accompany it, and by eight forty-five both of our stomachs are rumbling so the conversation moves into the kitchen while I start making preparations for dinner. A pot of water is set to boil and vodka tomato sauce from a bottle (I'm not exactly Martha Stewart) simmers on a back burner. "Tell me about the Darkspawn," I propose, hauling myself up onto my kitchen counter where I sit with my legs crossed in front of me and an open bag of chips at my side.

"Good thing that's not a vague question or anything," he replies smoothly. He leans against my refrigerator and I'm impressed again with just how sizable he is. "What do you want to know about them?"

I shrug and dig a tortilla chip from its crinkly home. I pop it into my mouth and offer him the bag, which he looks at curiously but doesn't actually accept. "I dunno, I don't know anything about them so I'm not sure what to ask. Are they monsters? Are they people? How many of them are there? What are they? Where did they come from? How do you kill them?" the list could easily go on, and is in danger of doing so when he holds up his hands to ward off my questions. "Maker, woman. Slow down. Why do you even want to know about them? You said you don't have them here."

I flush and dip my head to avoid his gaze, taking the opportunity to munch on another chip. "I just want to know, that's all. I'm curious. You don't have to tell me if you don't want to." I wave the bag of chips in his direction again and feel overly thrilled when he relents and takes one. It feels like a step in the right direction, a true peace offering in the shape of tortilla chips. It's in his mouth without a second thought and he's chewing but I can't tell from his expression whether he likes it or not. "The Darkspawn are monsters that used to be people." He volunteers, and inwardly I cheer. Progress is progress, after all. I lean over the pot of water but it's not boiling yet so I go back to ignoring it in favor of Alistair's answers about the Darkspawn. "What do you mean they used to be people?"

He sighs and gestures for me to give him the bag of chips again. I do and he pops another one into his mouth. "According to the Chantry, the first Darkspawn were created when Tevinter mages went into the Maker's Golden City. They corrupted it with their...mage-ness, I guess, and to punish them for their sins he turned them into the first Darkspawn. The Genlocks used to be Dwarves, the Hurlocks human, shrieks were elves and if you ask me, ogres look a lot like some of the Qunari. They live in holes and caves under the ground. You can find most of them in the Deep Roads when there isn't a Blight."

He isn't sharing the bag of chips, but I don't really care. I'm trying to picture these creatures, these monsters that used to be people, but I can't. I have nothing to visualize or compare them to. "Where are they when there is a Blight?"

Alistair frowns and hands me back the chips, looking as though he's not in the mood for them anymore. "Everywhere. They come up out of their holes, out of the Deep Roads and caves and march as horde. Everything they touch is death. They're an army of foul corruption, even the ground where they walk withers and dies and nothing will grown in the blackness for a long, long time, if it ever does. They destroy everything."

I shiver, understanding his loss of interest in what I've dubbed to be our 'friendchips'. "What do they want?" I ask quietly, a hush in my voice that must come from the heaviness of our topic.

"They don't want anything," he answers simply, grimly. "They just destroy. That's why it's a Blight."

He grows quieter, more still, and I can tell this conversation is leading his mind places that he'd rather it not go, but I can't help my questions. The idea of these things is so foreign and horrible, I feel like I want to know everything about them because that will somehow make what they are make more sense. "What do they look like?" I ask, regretting the question almost before it's out of my mouth.

He frowns, that line creasing his brow like it always does when he's in deep thought or when he's angry; and I'm a little concerned when I realize that I can already tell that about him. "They'll win no prizes for beauty, that's for sure. You can tell what they were before, almost. The Genlocks are short and stocky, the Hurlocks like I said, look like humans but...they're just these rotten things made of teeth and bad attitudes. Be glad you've never seen one. You never forget it."

The water on the stove is boiling finally and I slip from the counter, gesturing for Alistair to move so that I can get at the contents of my refrigerator. He watches curiously as I paw through the random containers and jugs of milk and juice, searching for the cheese stuffed raviolis that I know are in there because I bought them for a dinner I'd planned for me and Jack. I've been wanting to eat them for a few days now and this is as good an excuse as any. The fridge door closes and Alistair goes right back to leaning against it like he belongs there.

"How do you stop the Blight?" I ask over the sound of cheese filled pasta dropping into the pot of water. "With magic? You said they can do magic, too." The thought makes me shudder. Monsters are bad enough, but monsters that are magic and can do magic? No thanks, I don't want any please.

"The Grey Wardens stop the Blight," he answers immediately, and there's such a sense of finality in his tone that I know this is one of those things that he won't talk about. The Grey Wardens and specifically the Grey Warden Elissa seem to be off-limits for now, and I don't press my luck. I'm happy that he's even talking to me at all, because he was quite pointedly not in a chatty mood earlier. If I'm supposed to figure out what he's doing here and how I'm supposed to get him home, I'll need all the information I can get, so any that he's willing to volunteer is checked off as a bonus in my head.

The raviolis are dancing and jetting around the bubbles in the pot and I can tell they're almost done, poking at them with my wooden cooking spoon. "Are there a lot of Grey Wardens?"

"No." We're back to one word answers and his tone is frosty. I can't seem to stop putting my foot in my mouth. Navigating what's okay to ask him and what's going to upset him is trickier than I thought it would be, and I'm wary of scaring him off completely. Stupidly, I feel responsible for him. He's here in my home, he landed in my garden, he yelled at me. I feel like I should be the one to help him, I should be the one to get him home.

I fumble gracelessly with my poking spoon and end up jabbing one of the raviolis a little too hard, splitting it open right down the middle. I wince, lamenting the cheese that's bleeding out into the boiling water. I scowl and silently judge it for being such a flimsy piece of pasta, blaming all of my troubles from the day on it and its leaking cheese. Stupid, delicious thing.

I've lapsed into a silence that seems to make Alistair uncomfortable, if his fidgeting is anything to go by, and I sigh, fishing for something to say to the person who seems to get upset at the things that I say even if I don't mean for him to. "Tell me about your friends," I say at last, settling on what I hope is a neutral topic. It's the right choice and he grins down at me from his height, his eyes drifting to the ravaged ravioli that I'm punishing with repeated pokes.

"They're like my family. Wynne is a mage, a healer, and she wields guilt and propriety and stern looks the way that Sten wields his sword." He chuckles at his joke, but I can't exactly join him, as I have no idea who Sten is either. "He's a Qunari, a big fellow with the dourest face you've ever seen," he elaborates, when I don't share in his amusement. "I don't think I've ever heard him tell a joke or laugh at a joke the entire time I've known him."

He tells me about Leliana, the bard turned Sister turned Maybe-Crazy traveling companion to himself and Elissa. I hear about Barkspawn, the Mabari and that derails the conversation immediately when I ask what a Mabari is. I want one, by the end of his explanation. Shale the Golem, Zevran the sex-o-flex elven rogue, Ohgren the ale soaked dwarf and Morrigan are all names that are added to the list in my head, and I can't help but notice he's left Elissa conspicuously absent again.

The pasta is done and I lift it from the stove to the strainer I have sitting in the sink. Steam billows up and rolls over my face as it always does, fogging my glasses until I sigh and am unable to see anything at all. I'm sure it looks ridiculous, so for the time being I take them off and stick them on the counter beside me. Better not to see and look like a lady, than to see and look like a fool, my grandmother would say. Free of water, the raviolis are returned to the pot and are joined by the sauce and I let it simmer for a minute longer before clicking my stove off entirely.

"Why don't you talk about Elissa?" I ask, turning to face him. I fiddle absently with the hair tie around my wrist and my curiosity piques when he frowns at me. I'm not an idiot, so I can guess where this is going, I just want to be sure. Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back and I just can't stand the thought of maybe being wrong about a conclusion that I've jumped to.

"Why do you care?" he counters, folding his arms across his chest and looking away. Even banged up and bruised, with bandages and my semi-capable tending of his wounds, he looks good. I can't help it; I'd be blind or an idiot not to notice. It doesn't mean I'm interested, it just means that he's easy on the eyes.

"I asked you first," I bounce back, half turning to stir the pasta into the final minute or two it needs to sit before I can dish it out.

"Maybe I don't want to talk about it." Maybe? I can tell that he definitely doesn't.

"You said she's not your girlfriend, so what's the big deal? Is it secret Grey Warden stuff? I know you can't tell me about them, if that's it I'll just stop asking."

He grunts at me, and I whisk the pot of pasta from the stove to my counter top, now that it's cooled enough, and begin plying two bowls with fair, dinner sized portions. "So it's not Grey Warden stuff, then," I guess correctly. "It's something else. Alright, fair enough."

He grunts again and even though I can feel the heat of his glare on my back, I hold my head up high and pretend like I don't. The bowls are relocated to the my kitchen table and I gesture for Alistair to sit down, which he does. His stormy expression falters in the face of the tempting smells drifting from his dinner and I can tell he's making an effort to stay mad. I join him at the table, two cans of soda in hand and slide one across to him. He looks at it funny and it takes me a moment before I realize he has no idea what it is. I lean over and pop the pull tab for him, cracking it open and watching him squint at it.

He's so suspicious about everything, but with the way his stomach is grumbling I get the feeling that he's not going to hold out for long and it only takes about a minute and a half for him to start shoveling the food I've prepared into his mouth at a pace so fast it makes me pause. "What are you, starving?" I boggle. His bowl is empty before mine is even half, and he's looking so longingly at the pot where the leftovers are that I slide my bowl over to him.

"Just hungry," he answers, taking a break from inhaling his food to breathe. I crack open my own soda and take a drink, enjoying the crisp bubbles on my tongue half relaxing for the first time all day. He's slowed down his ravenous devouring to a more acceptable chomping. He seems to like it just fine, which fills me with a stupid pride. I was half worried that the food between here and there would be too different and he wouldn't want to eat it, or maybe he'd accuse me of trying to poison him or something. He's weird. I can tell that already.

The ceiling fan in my kitchen stirs the air and I prop my chin on my fist, watching him eat the last of whatever is in my bowl and go back to help himself to thirds from the pot on the stove. "What do you like to do, Alistair?" I ask on a whim. Everything I've asked him so far has been information based. I'm learning, about Thedas and Darkspawn and Mages, but not about him, and I'm curious.

He returns to the table with what is no doubt the last of the leftovers heaping in his bowl and slides back into his chair across from me. "Save the world, rescue pretty damsels in distress and be generally dashing and dapper and heroic all the time," he answers glibly, taking a cautious first sip of his soda. I've forgotten to warn him about how tart it will be, and I failed to mention the fizzy bubbles that make carbonated drinks so great, and he sputters, half choking when he swallows it wrong.

"If you choke and die because you can't drink soda right, I'll make fun of you," I warn, watching him gasp and fan his face while he tries to regain his composure. He shoots me a dirty look and I just smirk in return.

"If I choke and die," he gasps, finally getting a grasp on his malfunctioning wind pipe, "then you'll never get to find out what I do for fun and you'll waste your days away wondering just what it was."

I laugh easily, leaning back in my chair to watch him demolish the rest of our dinner. "I think that somehow, Alistair, I'd find a way to survive. Besides, you already told me so your argument is more than a little bit invalid. Dashing, dapper and heroic, remember?"

He grins at me, and I'm thrown for a loop. He's so back and forth that it's making my head spin. One minute he's the serious grey warden who's trapped in a strange place, and the next he's just Alistair, cracking jokes and spilling vodka sauce on my table when he eats too fast. The longer he stays here in my house, the more trouble I can already tell I'm going to be in. He's cute, he's charming and he's utterly dependent on me to get him out of here. It's a recipe for disaster that I can see coming from a mile away. I'm too bad at not getting attached to people. I can't even throw away the envelopes that my mother mails my birthday cards in.

I smother a yawn with my fist and lean my head on the table, my eyelids threatening to droop shut. It's been such a long day and I've been up since before the sun. I don't say anything more, and Alistair finishes his food in silence. I can tell he's watching me, because I can feel it, but I don't look up to double check. That would require energy that I suddenly find myself lacking.

He's done eating, I know because his silverware is quiet and I take a moment longer to myself before pasting on a smile and pushing myself up from the table. The dishes I can just take care of tomorrow, crusted on food be damned. My grandmother would choke, but hey, these are extenuating circumstances.

"Thanks for answering all my questions," I mumble through another yawn. My arms stretch up and over my head and I grunt, relishing the feeling of my muscles squeezing and contracting from the sudden movement. "I'm sure I'll have more tomorrow when I've taken the time to properly sit and think about things. You probably have a lot of questions too, and we'll take care of those tomorrow as well."

Tomorrow is already making my head hurt and it's not even here yet.

Alistair nods and my yawns must be infectious because he's fighting them off just as much as I am. "You can sleep in the guest room," I offer graciously - is it ungracious to refer to yourself as gracious? "Follow me, I'll show you where it is."

He lumbers behind me, his footfalls surprisingly quiet for someone so large, and I have to keep peeking over my shoulder to reassure myself that he's actually following me and hasn't wandered off to find some horribly humiliating thing that I have no doubt is in my house. A twist and a turn down a hallway ends abruptly at a closed door, and I gesture toward it lazily. "There's a bed and a TV in there. If it's kind of...old lady in there it's because that's the room my grandmother stays in when she comes to visit. Just don't mess up any of her things and you'll be fine."

He nods again, his hand dwarfing the knob on the door as he turns it and I lean around him, flicking the light and making sure he sees me do it so I don't have to explain. "I'm just down the hall if you need me for something, just come bang on my door. I sleep pretty hard so it might take a minute or two."

I'm halfway to my room when I hear the door creak open and I turn back when I hear him calling my name. He looks awkward, reminding me of a boy who's only just remembered the manners he's been forgetting. "Thanks for the help, and err, good night."

I smile at him, like I've been doing all night because I can't help myself. "'Night, Alistair."


I wake up before the sun, a habit (or a problem) I've had since I was a teenager. By the time six AM rolls around I'm already awake with my teeth brushed and my game-face on for the day and by the time the sun is shining in merrily through my window, I've already called my shop to tell them I'm not coming in and gotten half of my morning chores done.

It's warm and nice when I slide open my back door and step out onto my porch. It's a welcome fluctuation from our normally chilly weather and I take advantage of it, dropping a sunhat onto my messy hair and tugging on boots over my pajamas. With Alistair still asleep, this is the perfect opportunity to investigate the full damage that was done to not only my peas, but to my fence as well.

It's strange to stand in the place where he just...appeared. I can't even think that without feeling silly, but it happened. There's a tangy snap in the air, a lingering friction that raises the hair on my arms and I inhale deeply. The scent of ozone is everywhere, it tastes like lightning and I wonder if it's the residual effects of whatever magic it was that sent Alistair to me.

Unfortunately, there is no hope for my vegetables after the tragedy of the Great Pea Massacre, but I kneel down next to them and do what I can anyway. Their poor shoots are cracked and split, no doubt from where Alistair's considerable weight landed on them, and the pretty pink and purple flowers have turned the dusky grey of crushed petals. I sigh sadly, tracing a finger tip across a ruined, silky bloom. Peas aren't difficult to grow, but I'm fond of my garden and I feel awful that this happened. My poor peas. A shiver tickles my spine and I quiver in reflex. 'Someone walked over my grave,' is the phrase that we used to describe that feeling back home, and ominously, it feels accurate. Looking down at my damaged and lost vegetables, I wonder vaguely if this only the beginning of something that is already spiraling rapidly out of my control. It's a thought that tightens my stomach. Nothing can be done for my peas, fate dealt them the blow of an Alistair shaped demise. I find myself hoping that it doesn't have the same thing in mind for me.

My fence, the not-so-sturdy wooden creation that it is, has taken some moderate damage, but it looks like something that can be easily repaired. I'm making a mental note to call Jack and have him come look at it when I freeze. I feel my eyes widen and my gaze darts back to the curtained window of the room that Alistair is currently sleeping in. Shit. How am I supposed to explain him to Jack? We're not together anymore, not at the moment anyway, but that still doesn't do much for how this is going to look. Our most recent split was only a few days ago, and already I've got a man sleeping in the guest bedroom. I've never been a good liar, and Jack can spot when I'm trying to pull one over on him almost immediately. I have to think of something, and quick. Despite our break-ups, Jack comes and goes as he pleases. It's never bothered me before, I know that we have a strange relationship, but I irrationally don't want him poking around the house while Alistair is around.

The break up culminated in Jack leaving his keys, but that too, has happened before and I always end up giving them back to him. The idea of Jack lounging on my couch with Tom on his knee and Alistair in the guest bedroom makes my stomach drop uncomfortably, and I can recognize that the foolish desire I have to suddenly protect Alistair from a man who wouldn't mean him any harm anyway is ridiculous. Still, it's a notion that I can't shake and I'm concerned for what might happen if Jack were to show up. We're on-again, off-again, but this situation is new, and not even just because Alistair is in the mix. I've never had men over, or dated in the stretches in between Jack and I. I don't actually know how he might react. I like to plan things, I like mapping them out and writing lists and organizing. I do not like not knowing what might happen.

My peas seem suddenly very small and inconsequential and with a mournful look back at their crumpled shoots that won't be growing any longer, I snatch the hat from my head and bound inside. I'm moving faster than is reasonably necessary, but I can't help it. Now that I've considered the possibility of Jack showing up unannounced, it seems like it can and will happen at any given moment and I'm so unprepared that it's freaking me out. Not that there's actually much I could do to prepare, but I still bustle around my house with the force of a whirlwind. Cabinets rattle and chairs squeak as I move them needlessly, I can't shake the crawling feeling that I'm missing something and so I set out trying to find it.


It would help if I knew what I'm looking for, but I don't. I'm hoping I know it when I see it, so I can stop feeling like I've completely forgotten something important. It's a quarter after ten when I hear the door of my guest bedroom creak open on squeaky hinges and I pause my ransacking when I hear the quiet pad of Alistair's feet coming toward me. I feel like an idiot, when the flash of recognition thrills me. Of course, that's what I was forgetting. He's got no shoes on, and his hair is sticking up every which way as he rubs the sleep from his eyes. "What time is it?" he mumbles, running a hand through his hair and disturbing it into even further disarray. He's so cute that it hurts.

"Ah, maybe a little after ten," I answer, still feeling like a moron. I don't know how I keep forgetting that Alistair is a person but I do. I keep thinking of him as something that happened to me, rather than someone that I'm stuck in a situation with. I've been worrying over what might happen if Jack finds out that he's staying here, without stopping to actually just ask Alistair for his input. I get ahead of myself far too often. "Do you want to take a shower?" His brow furrows and the look he gives me is silently perplexed. "Oh right," I cluck, "you don't know what that is. Let me amend my question into two parts. A, do you want to know what a shower is? B, would you like to take a shower?"

I'm on my way to the bathroom before he answers, and I hear him fall into place behind me. My bathroom isn't small, but it's not gigantic either and it feels a little bit crowded with Alistair standing at the shower right next to me. Every time my shoulder or arm brushes against his, I'm painfully aware that he's adorable when he's sleepy. It sounds so absurd, but I really can't help it. I can repeat my mantra of off limits, off limits as many times as I want, and it won't stop me from appreciating his face. Not that I plan on putting the moves on him, like I would even know how to do something like that, but there's no harm in looking. That's what I keep telling myself, anyway.

"Alright, I'll keep it simple for you," I begin, pushing the shower curtain aside and stepping over the lip of my tub. "Turn this one left for hot water." My hand falls on the control for water temperature and I look up to make sure he's paying attention. "Turn this right for cold, if you mess up and end up turning in a direction you didn't mean to, you're in for an unhappy surprise." I straighten my back and point above my head, at the spigot. "This is where the water comes out. It's kind of like...a waterfall, except less noisy and less...splashy." So far so good, he seems to be following. He's got an interested look on his face, at any rate. My previous observation that maybe he wasn't too bright is rapidly turning around to bite me in the ass. He's picking up on things faster than I thought he would.

"So it's for bathing," he guesses without hesitation. He possesses a courage that I lack when it comes to tackling new things and new ideas, and it warms me. I can't volunteer an answer unless I'm absolutely certain I know it's the right one.

"Right!" I beam up at him, pleased that he's catching on so quickly and he looks startled by my reaction, but I'm rewarded with a lazy smile none the less. "The water is carried through pipes in the walls and pumped out here, where you use it to bathe. See the drain down there? That'll carry the water down and into the city pipes where it'll be cleaned and pumped back through." I really hope I got that right, I'm not a plumber, I don't know anything about water systems or how they actually even work. I just use them. Still, I'm fairly certain I got the gist of it correct, and what matters is that he understands that he can use this to get clean. Nothing is worse than a smelly man.

"Shampoo is here, conditioner is here if you use that, I don't know if you have that where you come from. Shampoo goes in your hair, conditioner goes in after, rinse it out. They work just like soap, which is also right there, by the way. Towels are in that closet, make sure the shower curtain is tucked into the tub, remember to lose your pants," I rattle off, introducing him to the things in my bathroom while I back away to give him some privacy. "The door locks, take your time. I haven't had a shower yet but I can just take one after you've finished."

I click the door shut behind me and I hear the spray of the water against the tub that means he's successfully started the shower, at least. I bite my lip against my laughter when I hear a curse and a yelp not too long after. I forgot to tell him that the water needs a minute to warm up. "Maker's breath, woman!" he bellows through the door, and I scurry away lest my laughter get the best of me.